The River of Life

I finished a new painting over the weekend, one I have titled “River of Life.” I had been working on it for more than a week and, over the weekend, I went to see an exhibition of Mark Tobey paintings at the Addison Gallery in North Andover, MA. It was very inspiring. I learned a lot by examining closely the detailed brushwork of Tobey, and also his extensive use of “white writing.”

Inspired, I added a white overlay to what I had been working on and was much more satisfied with the result.

I usually like to give my paintings very generic names, so as not to evoke any preconceptions in the viewer. But as I kept looking at what I’d done, a passage from the Baha’i Writings that speak of Baha’u’llah’s Revelation as “the river that is life indeed” came to my head and so did this name for the painting.

Here it is: